Coin telephone stations typically include all of the features of a conventional single line telephone instrument, such as a handset containing transmitting and receiving elements, a cradle for the handset to signal when the handset is "on-hook" and when it is taken "off-hook", and a dialing mechanism, such as a rotary pulse dial, or a dual tone multifrequency dial pad for generating dialing signals. In addition, the coin telephone station includes a coin handling mechanism for receiving coins into an escrow chamber, for identifying each coin by denomination and for generating signals indicative of the deposit of each particular coin denomination handled by the station, for collecting the coins in the escrow chamber when a call is successfully established and/or completed, and for returning coins to the user when the call is not successfully established for one of a number of reasons, such as called party busy, called party unavailable, or telephone system equipment busy, etc.
Conventionally, the coin handling mechanism generated chimes or other signals to annunciate over the telephone tip and ring wire pair to an operator the deposit of particular coins into the escrow chamber. These audible chimes or signals were listened to by the operator to be sure that the user paid for the call before the operator placed it and connected the called party to the coin telephone station.
More recently, the telephone companies have automated coin telephone service so as to eliminate the need for the operator. One example of a fully automated coin telephone handling system is disclosed in the Dudonis U.S. Pat. No. 4,031,324. The approach disclosed in that patent provided for a central office unit which provided automatic generation and delivery via digital stores of messages to the coin telephone user for prompting deposit a required amount of coins to make the particular call. When coins representing the required amount of coins were deposited, an automatically generated message acknowledged the correct deposit. Audible intercoin prompts were also automatically generated and put out to the coin station to prompt the user to continue depositing coins until the required amount was received. If the user over deposited, an automatic message, providing for calling credit, was then generated and put out to the user. The methods disclosed in the Dudonis patent enabled coin tone detectors to operate simultaneously with the announcement generators without interference.
Further improvements in conventional coin telephone stations have been inclusion at the stations of coin counting mechanisms which enable periodic polling by central office equipment to determine exact coin counts in the collected coin vault of the telephone, thereby eliminating any source of temptation to workers charged with removing the coins from the vault. One example of this improvement is found in Zarouni U.S. Pat. No. 4,124,774 (now U.S. Reissue Pat. No. 30,973).
Dively et al. U.S. Pat. No. 4,698,840 describes a coin operated telephone including an internal computer for managing the operations thereof. The computer analyzes a called party number entered by the user and computes the minimum charge for a minimum time period for the call. A display is then presented to the user as to the amount to be deposited. As coins are deposited, the amount is decremented, and the internal computer connects the station to a telephone line once the requisite amount has been received. The Carter et al. U.S. Pat. No. 4,825,460 added a local message generation capability and an automatic call completion monitoring circuit to the more manual concept disclosed by Dively et al. and offered an opportunity to the user to deliver a message to a message delivery platform in the event that the called party was unavailable. The Cornell et al. U.S. Pat. No. 4,221,933 describes a message delivery platform to which central office ESS equipment is connected via trunk circuits for message collection, storage and delivery.
The Segre-Amar U.S. Pat. No. 4,510,349 describes apparatus for delivery of messages, including commercials, to a calling party during a ringing interval. The Sleevi U.S. Pat. No. 4,811,382, adds the concept of delivering a message which has been selected on the basis of the number entered by the user of the telephone.
While each of the foregoing examples of the prior art has addressed one or a few of the issues relating to coin telephone service, other issues remain. For example, in countries and locations experiencing rapid currency fluctuations and particularly inflationary trends, the existing coin telephone stations are adapted to collect too few coins to accommodate the increasing numbers of coins needed to cover the cost of even local calls. An improved coin telephone service should be adapted to make continued use of the many thousands of conventional coin telephone stations already in place. Also, coin telephone systems having increased interaction with the user are needed. For instance, many locations, such as public airports, include numerous coin telephone stations. Also routinely present at public airports are special telephone stations providing automatic dial-up connections to a variety of services and business of interest to the traveller, such as car rentals, taxi cab, bus and hotels/motels. A need has arisen to add the features and functions of special purpose telephones to the functionality of standard coin telephone stations, thereby eliminating the need for the special telephone stations.
The present inventors have previously described a telephone toll integrity checking system in U.S. Pat. No. 4,839,916 which includes some of the system elements described below which are arranged and programmed differently in order to accomplish a quite different task within a different application. The reader is referred to the referenced patent for further particulars of that system.
A heretofore unsolved need has remained for a coin telephone service which is fully programmable and which makes full use of the capabilities and possibilities of the coin telephone station as an interactive, information and data entry and delivery terminal device, as well as a basic communications station.